My Blue Day

Hey Guys
I've put a new track up in Tribe Music.....'My Blue Day' Part of my idea was not only to get some comment itself but to use the system again to familiarise myself plus make some effort to actually record something to improve my playing, however small that increase might be.

Hope you get something out of it and feel free to comment
Pablo

Tryin' on some funk

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There's a C#m groove called 'Doo Rag' by Galactic that the mighty Straightjacket used as a warm-up jam for practice as well as our two Jiggi Juke Joint gigs.

Here are 3 versions: (Click on any of the three to play)

• Backing track of me doing rhythm and bass (Nice to jam to)
  
• My lead to that backing track
• My son Miles' lead guitar and keyboard to the same backing track

It's fascinating hearing his spin.
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First Blues Project in 'A'

Thought I'd both try out my new Recorder with this 2 track effort, do a bit of practice in the genre I'd really like to play in and also get used to the uploading/posting system.

I know you'll all have a chuckle at the harp but you gotta start somewhere.
Maybe someone might be interested to put some vocals or lead over it. The harp could certainly be taken out if anyone was interested.
The Vich

'Girls in Black'

Mirror man

Just testing to see if my link works!

Posting a Tune in The Shed

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I assume that we all would want to be able to hear a new Shed Tune by just clicking on a link and hearing the tune and maybe download it if we want.

To do this the person posting a new tune has to:-

UPLOAD YOUR TUNE TO THE 4-SHARED HOST SITE

Here's El'Musto's directions on how to do that:-

STEP 1:
Go to http://www.4shared.com

STEP 2:
In the GREEN box (top right hand corner) of the screen is says “Already a user?”
Just below that in the two white boxes type in this email address:

Tribal_manshed@webafrica.org.za (remember the UNDERSCORE between tribal and manshed!!!!!)

The password is tribe001
Then click on Login
Click the option to 'remember your passwords' so you don't have to fill those out every time you want to login


NOW YOU HAVE TO POST THAT TUNE IN THE SHED AS A LINK TO THE HOST SITE

Create a New Post in The Shed, type a title for the tune, highlight the word, and click the green planet&chainlink icon in the little toolbar above the text window. It will ask you to type in the http address for the file/tune you want to link to. Now you have to go and find that tune in 4SHARE(close that little window for the time being as it wont allow you to leave it open right now)

Now open the 4shared site where your tune is hosted, click on the tune, it will open a dialogue box for that tune in which a "Download Link" has the http address you're looking for.

Copy the text in that box, and paste it in the Shed link box that asked for an http address for the tune. That's it!

NB make sure you dont have a double http/http when you've pasted because there's already one there that you have to delete.
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Starting your own recording studio with $25.00 ...courtesy Dr. Mersham

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STEP ONE ....GET THE SOFTWARE, ROBIN'S BACKING TRACK AND THE HARDWARE

Download Audacity :-http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/

Download the Switch File Converter:- http://www.nch.com.au/switch/

The backing track is attached in the Tex Bluebonnet's library in the next post above:- Save to file on your computer ( I have a Shed Recordings File)

Buy the little digital headphone and speaker that Gazza has (Probably $25.00 at Dick Smith)


STEP TWO ...IMPORT ROBIN'S BACKING TRACK TO AUDACITY

In Audacity toolbar "File' click 'Import Audio File" ...select your saved file of Robin's backing track

That will now be a separate track on Audacity for you to hear and create as many tracks of your own to as you want



STEP THREE ...RECORD TO AUDACITY

Open Audacity and click the red button for record ..then the " button to pause.

You should now have a stereo audio track open and paused, ready to record whatever the little microphone/earphones from Dick hears.

Hit the pause button again when you're ready and go for it ....singing into the mic. .....or playing guitar through the guitar amplifier with the mic. right in front of it.


STEP FOUR ...SAVE AUDACITY RECORDING AND CONVERT WAV FILE TO MP3 FILE

In 'File' select 'Export as Wav file" ...direct where you want the file saved (your Shed recordings file)

Open Switch File Converter and click the green cross to 'Add File"

Direct it to where you've saved the wav file

Select your Wav file from the Shed Recordings file you've created by now I hope.

In the bottom left hand corner of Switch there's a 'Output Format' ...select .mp3

In the right hand corner tick the option box for 'Output to same folder as source file

Click 'Convert' orange arrow at the bottom right

VOILA ...YOU'VE OVERDUBBED A SHED TUNE AND SAVED IT AS AN MP3 THAT YOU CAN SHARE WITH YOUR SHEDMATES!!

Circle of Fifths for dummies

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I've been told of this concept but have never had it graphically explained ...I need pictures and chords.

Click on the circle to see a good resolution including the text.

I've also linked the heading of this post to the site that covers this and a whole lotta stuff that I intend to explore over the next few months/years.


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Clive

Guys,
Just letting you know I'm checking in on the blogs but don't have much to say yet. Doesn't mean I'm not interested thogh

PAYING YOUR DUES AT THE PASS

(Click on the image for a high resolution version)

Something you other surfers and watermen might enjoy reading just to to change our tack a little for the weekend
The Vich



PAYING YOUR DUES AT THE PASS
Driving back into town on the fringe of darkness, I’m still asking myself if it all was worth it. I’d already taken holy orders the previous day suggesting to a friend that I’d never go back. Such is the drug.
My upper arms ache from paddling for almost 2 hours and I can’t even moan to my best friend who has been whipped away out of town in a frenzy of pussy-whippedness. Normally he’d be here. For me. Bitching to each other. Why? Why did we bother going there? But I’m alone – comfortably numb.
I knew the swell was there; I even knew that it was a sweet 3 to 4 foot from the talk about the town. That’s enough. Late afternoon, the heavy dudes are done.....spent. What could go wrong?
Driving up through a Scottish mist settled in on the hills and dales of Suffolk Park, I start to fine tune my attitude. OK, cue in the goal set – take no prisoners and no surrender until I get at least three waves.
The rain is relentless and I’m soaked just doing a quick recce down the boat ramp. That’ll do it every time. Now I’m really committed. Crowd is about three quarters of the previous morning; Lennox is closed out on the beachies, wide sets that’ll smash you at the Point – life is all about choices and I’m grovelling down on the bottom line coming here. I hate this place, but only for the crowd, another ruined piece of north coast perfection. The Cape St. of the east coast and I helped to ruin it.
A sliver of opportunity sits between Love Rock and the mainland carpark. It’s the quick entry to the take-off area. Paddle through the shorebreak and if you’re lucky the rip will float you around the corner. Sweet.
There are 7 young guys beside me as we hit the shallows. It looks easy. It is easy. Punch through the double-up 20 metres out and you’re home free. I try twice. Bashed twice as the shore-break doubles up, I turn and retreat to go back around to the usual push off point and see the other seven cresting over the top of the unforgiving dumpers heading for the take-off point.
Walking around Love Rock I console myself with old stories. Rick at the Point and in the boat channel back at Lennox. Taking impossible drops, not making impossible drops. He’s a waterman I tell myself. Get back out there.
Strangely on the other side it takes but 60 seconds to paddle across the impact zone into the ravenous hordes. What was I thinking. This is what we come to terms with when we age. Think smarter do simpler. But show respect. Where once was bullet proof now there’s bullet holes. Where once was wave count now there’s wave quality. Where once was quantity now let’s qualify. This is my lesson for the afternoon.
Rip is savage, crowd is aggressive, no wanton waves survive. It’s a rock n’ roll circus on water. Dog eat dog. Paddle deeper, further out, push in closer, anticipate.
Flick off the first two waves, I’m tryin’ not to be that kinda guy. Many aren’t. The place does make you think though. I’m looking for the edge of a peak where one of the longboarders might catch a rail on the drop, or a WQS hopeful gets crunched in a sandy, sucking pit. It hardly happens. This crowd is so close we can touch, our personal space is 200 metres further down the line in flat water. It’s as if an ultralite has dropped a bag of human peppercorns at the edge of Love Rock. Leg ropes snag, guys are called off every wave, the Mal riders are dangerously out of control on the take-off but it gets big ugly when a dude stacked with a 6 pack and more refuses to budge on a smallish wall, eventually fading a screaming 20 year old into the void of the foamball. What priority!
They are still yelling at each other as I try yet again to paddle closer to the zone. Finally, in desperation at being burnt and worse still, being ignored, the younger of the two vents a God-awful scream that would wake the dead. It’s that ugly. As for me I have two other small offerings, non events to be honest. But I’ll take one more. Give me something, anything my basic instinct screams at me.
I get lucky when two guys take each other out off their bottom turns. Spin around, paddle fast and pull in. ‘It’s a wave Mrs Walker, it’s a wave!’ My profile, skinny arse, emaciated torso topped with a comb-over, is a walk-up start for one or two poachers and I have to call one guy off twice. Luckily for me it’s not ‘Mr Six Pack’.
Most surfers understand that euphoria of one good wave; it fuels the beast and pushes you for more. Around the hundred metre mark, I’m on my own, climbing and dropping, milking it and enjoying the glide. In the deeper water in the middle of the bay it starts to flatten. Is this it? Is it over? Crouch lower, trying to get some drive into the shallows. To my right I see an unbroken swell, bent like a boomerang, trying to link up with my once proud three foot wall. As the Aryan beauty merges with my mongrel child there’s a double up and a pocket forms that I slide into. Not huge but we’re going places. It’s clean with the ribs of a chicken skeleton caked with penicillium. Now the water is quite shallow and the wave is peeling hollow. I love this. Not a thing to do but trim. Quite quickly I see the lip curl over the top of my right shoulder and looking up I can see the split of sky and curved water. Just as rapidly it fades back behind me but it’s a pit of sorts and somewhere down the track I’ll claim it over more than a few drinks. It will get bigger too. At least double I’m thinking.
Such a drug this animal surf. I should paddle in but I can’t. Still a way from the beach after flicking out I go again. What the hell, there’s only a hint of dusk. Adrenaline has pushed the lactose riddled body into my memory. Those who know The Pass well will testify it’s a long paddle back, Mal or no Mal. Some light relief paddling back beside a young guy as we come up behind a struggling babe whose brown bikini bottom is a wedgie pencil line stuck in the crack of a perfect coffee coloured arse. I suggest to him that, ‘The view here is better than the crowd, eh?’ Just to let him know I come from Queensland where ‘Eh ‘ is Oxford ratified. Finally I sit out wide, on the edge for a breather. Closer in near the rock, it’s a rats nest of flapping ducks and drowning chickens. Angel on my shoulder tells me, ‘Don’t go there.’
As another sizeable set stacks up further out I sense that this is it. The last hurrah. No matter what. I can always pull off, particularly if he’s got a six pack. At least five surfers jostling each other in a frenzy of flying arms paddle for the first but I’m around ten metres wider out than they. This wall is bumpy as the larger waves here can often be. Up and accelerating downwards, I make a tentative turn off the bottom. Over to my left the lip has thrown wildly over and the foam chews at my legs. I look around; some pig dog has got to come flying out of that mess fairly soon. They always do. But there’s nothing, not a soul. I can’t believe my luck or is it perseverance. I’ll decide that later. For all its bravado it’s a good but not great wave and there’s to be no double up this time as it fattens up half-way in. Do I care? Life is good. There is a God. At this point though I have no perspective – that will come later on the drive home.

Posting off the Links

Can someone advise me how to negiotate posting off the E mail links which seems to be where a few of you are now putting stuff.
I have tried getting in this way and even signing up again on Google but my post didn't seem to get published.
This seems to be the easiest way to see the comments, is this not so?
The Vich